Congratulations to Johnny Clegg who received an OBE this month for his contribution to music, upliftment, and the fight against apartheid in South Africa in a career that has spanned over three decades. Here’s the photo that says it all: The legendary South African singer joined personalities like actor Benedict Cumberbatch to be honoured by Queen Elizabeth II last Tuesday with […]

The seaside town of Hermanus became a movie set this week with the filming of “The Whale Caller”. Based on the acclaimed book of the same title by Zakes Mda and adapted for the screen by Zola Maseko, the story is about a kelp-horn-blowing man who seems to be deeply drawn to a very particular whale. […]

Thanksgiving is a very big time in the US, when people do anything to get home to the family and turkey dinner. This year National Geographic’s biggest scripted series ever tells the story of the first Thanksgiving, when British settlers on the Mayflower landed at Cape Cod in 1620, except it was all shot near another Cape – Cape Town. “Saints & […]

As superheroes hit the movie and TV screens of the world, South Africa is getting one of its own. And going from this trailer, it looks pretty special and amazing. So does Johannesburg! Director Gareth Crocker introduces clips from the series, “Jongo” https://vimeo.com/124604413 Based in the City of Gold and the Cradle of Humankind, the eight-part series “Jongo” […]

“Nomvula” is a very chill, very catchy Xhosa song by up-and-coming singer Nathi – he’s been called “a breath of fresh acoustic air” – in a gorgeous video shot around his home province of the Eastern Cape. The song is from his debut album, “Buyelekhaya”, and has already been viewed over 300,000 times on YouTube in less […]

The horror novel ‘Day Four’ by South African Sarah Lotz has reached the semifinals of the 2015 Goodreads Choice Awards, which brands itself as the only major book awards chosen by readers. A book about South African Elon Musk has also been nominated, in a non-fiction category. Goodreads, which started in 2007 and has apparently got 40 […]

The already well-known three-year-old DJ Arch Junior has won the ‘South Africa’s Got Talent’ competition, and picked up a half a million rand in prize money in the process. The tiny DJ, Oratilwe Hlongwane from Alexandra, Johannesburg, who was clearly a favourite with the judges even in the semifinals, was one of six acts who reached the final, […]

Jeremy Loops has taken to Facebook to reveal just how challenging it can be for a South African musician to fill concert halls around the world. Many South Africans abroad – in other professions – will relate to that higher hurdle you sometimes have to jump to prove, to those at home and abroad, that you […]

Watch a foreign movie when you know it’s made in South Africa – but is meant to be somewhere else – and you can’t help looking for those telltale signs, places you recognise. It’s supposed to be Los Angeles or somewhere in the middle of America, but you know it’s the Atlantic Seaboard in Cape Town […]

Anyone visiting Johannesburg – especially Jeppestown – might notice some new art decorating its walls, garage doors and basically any space flat and vertical worth a spray can. That’s because the fifth annual City of Gold Urban Art festival took place at the end of October. Graffiti artists from South Africa and abroad took part in painting up the place, […]

One scene in Soft Vengeance will always stay with me: Two men sit in a TV studio for BBC’s Hard Talk. One is a British journalist, the other a smiling, heavily accented, one-armed man in a colourful African traditional shirt. “Is forgiveness too cheap for the kinds of crimes committed under apartheid in South Africa?” the journalist […]

A video of Sihle the Drummer (his surname is not given on Facebook) playing drums on an assortment of stand-in objects was first posted on his Facebook page in August and was viewed at least 410,000 times. That seems to have gotten him a real set, which he now plays in a new video. Watch Sihle’s first […]

Just in time for its 80th anniversary as a board game, Monopoly will now have a Cape Town version and will include the city on its world game board. “Monopoly fans around the world will be able to visit the big 7 Capetonian attractions, play beach bats on some of our top beaches, play sport, go to […]

South Africa plays a feature role – and it’s a good one – in the new James Bond movie, ‘Spectre’, even though South Africa will be one of the last countries in the world that actually sees a major launch of the spy extravaganza. While the movie itself – which is brilliant – flits from Mexico […]

One month into his stint as a talk show host, Trevor Noah spoke to his wildly popular competitor Jimmy Kimmel about how he  gave up his life in South Africa, where he was becoming more successful, to come to try his luck in America. “South Africa is small,” Noah said. “And when you’re from a […]

President Jacob Zuma has congratulated South African hip hop artist Cassper Nyovest on being the first local musician to fill the 20,000 seating capacity Dome in Northgate, Johannesburg, without the assistance of any international act. The SA entertainer – who produces, raps and writes – performed to a full capacity Dome arena over the weekend, fulfilling his dream – […]

A statue by Anton van Wouw that was originally won with a 10 cent raffle ticket could fetch half a million rand in a Johannesburg auction next week of major South African artworks. Paintings and sculptures by luminaries such as Maggie Laubser, Jan Hendrik Pierneef, Irma Stern, Ephraim Mojalefa Ngatane, Lucas Sithole and William Kentridge are […]

Following hot – and colourfully – on the heels of Port Elizabeth, Cape Town and Johannesburg, Pretoria is getting amped for its bold and beautiful ‘Color Run’ tomorrow morning. Scenes similar to those on this page – photographed by Helena Sousa at Cape Town’s event on 17 October – will be seen in Centurion tomorrow. The 5km race – which […]

Zapiro’s cartoon says it all. The actions of one minister have possibly taken down one of South Africa’s strongest-performing sectors – tourism. It has been estimated that the visa regulations imposed by Home Minister Malusi Gigaba in October 2014 could cost South Africa at least half a billion dollars a year in lost tourism revenue. The intentions […]

On the one-month anniversary of taking over the ‘Daily Show’ from Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah spent part of yesterday being interviewed by hugely popular talk show host Ellen Degeneres, who spoke to him about his love of roller coasters. Watch a short clip from the ‘Ellen’ show in the video here Degeneres said on the […]

Within a week of Adele launching her comeback single (watch below) – Hello – after a three year break, it rocketed to number one around the world, was heralded as the song of the century,  become the fastest selling single in the UK in 2015, attracted over 114 million views on YouTube (!) and triggered an avalanche of cover […]

It might be a bit late to get to Scotland by the weekend, but this trailer shows you what exactly will be going on at the Africa in Motion Film Festival. And as you can see, some pretty amazing movies are being made in Africa. Get a taste of the festival movies in this hip video https://vimeo.com/140192562 Now […]

A new television series launching in South Africa tonight – ‘Four Weddings’ – looks like it’s going to be really interesting…if the trailer is anything to go by. Watch the reactions below when three of the four brides realise that the fourth, Dinah, is going to have a traditional township wedding…including inviting over 400 people (the entire […]

Maboneng, Joburg’s hot new shopping and eating area, was one of the first to glam up old shipping containers with glass windows and wooden floors to turn them into retail shops, but now Melville has gone one better by creating the 27Boxes mall out of over two dozen of them. Opened in July, the mall is one of the […]

Just in time for the worldwide release of the highly anticipated Danny Boyle movie ‘Steve Jobs’, about the Apple founder, a South African version of the trailer – with a couple of ‘bliksems’ and ‘voetseks’ thrown in – has been uploaded to YouTube. https://youtu.be/H_tnqZ_686w The movie stars Michael Fassbender as the legendary but controversial Jobs, as […]